Spot Instances
A type of Amazon EC2 instance that allows users to bid on spare computing capacity in the AWS cloud.
Description
Spot Instances are a cost-effective option for users who can be flexible about when their applications run. They allow customers to take advantage of unused EC2 capacity at significantly lower prices compared to On-Demand instances. The pricing model is based on a bidding system, where users specify the maximum price they are willing to pay per hour for an instance. If the spot price exceeds the user’s bid, the instance may be terminated with little notice. Spot Instances are ideal for workloads that are fault-tolerant and can tolerate interruptions, such as big data analysis, batch processing, and CI/CD pipelines. For example, a company running a machine learning model can leverage Spot Instances to reduce costs significantly, while a digital media company can use them for transcoding videos in a parallel processing environment. However, it’s essential for users to have strategies in place to handle instance interruptions effectively.
Examples
- A startup using Spot Instances for data processing jobs, significantly reducing their cloud costs.
- A video streaming service utilizing Spot Instances to transcode videos during peak demand hours at lower costs.
Additional Information
- Spot Instances can be up to 90% cheaper than On-Demand instances.
- Users can monitor and manage Spot Instances through AWS Management Console and AWS CLI.